Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [7]
Likewise, no analytical scholarship will have wheedled its way into the pages of this text; as I said above, my sources are largely secondary, and I rely on the Internet more than an online Texas Hold ’em addict.
Nor is this a book of philosophy, religion, or spirituality. My credentials to speak on any of the above topics are decidedly scanty; I dropped first-year philosophy when I learned that there was a mathematical component, I almost got kicked out of my religious confirmation class for acting up, and you wouldn’t get your ankles wet wading in the pool of my spiritual knowledge. Indeed, you will find nothing in this book that advocates following a particular creed, religious doctrine, or any form of theological thinking. Franklin himself, as best I can understand it, believed in a higher power but not in dogmatic religion.
This is not a book that contains answers to the fundamental questions of existence. Arthur Herman, author of How the Scots Invented the Modern World, poses the question, “How do human beings become moral beings, who treat one another with kindness, regard and cooperation, rather than brutality and savagery?”1 Good question. If you were expecting an answer to such a question in the pages of this book, you were mistaken. I have no qualifications, professional credentials, or history of past successes that might make me a candidate for offering advice on how to be a better person. I’ll leave that to Ben.
{ ’Tis easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.}
Finally, this was not to be a book of great adventures or extravagant gestures. If I was to achieve anything, it had to be consistent with how Ben would have approached things. His was a course of daily living, not a journey up Everest.
At this point, you’re probably asking yourself (as I’m sure my friend Chris was) if there is anything of value to be found in this book. Having spelled out what it is not, perhaps I had better give some idea of what this book is (or rather what I hope it is).
This is a diary of frequent failure and rare success. It is the account of one man’s largely unsuccessful attempts at self-improvement through emulating one of history’s giants. It is the journal of a quest. It is a tale for Thirsters. That’s it. Nothing more.
Let’s get on with the preparations.
Franklin’s Course
To understand Franklin’s course (and thus to replicate it), one must understand Franklin. He was clearly, in the language of twenty-first-century management courses, goal oriented; one does not discover electricity or invent the armonica (no, there is no h missing from this word—look it up!) without good project management skills. In fact, his course has all the features of a well-planned venture: a defined goal, a daily task list, and a method for measuring success.
To ensure a daily compliance to the project, he developed what must have been the world’s first day planner. He allotted times to all his business and assigned himself the task of conceiving a “good deed” day. Here’s an example from his autobiography:
Of course, Franklin felt the need to track his successes and failures. To do so, he created a graph, recognizable to first graders everywhere as the “Gold Star” chart. Instead of rewards for good deeds, however, he marked down each transgression of the virtues. Here’s how he described it:
I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I rul’d each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I cross’d these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to